Once Stolen English Treasures At Yale Center For British Art

Exhibit Focuses On 1778 Capture Of Ship Loaded With Artworks

In January 1779, the Westmorland, an armed British merchant ship, set sail from Livorno, Italy, destination London. It was filled with Italian food products, but also with artworks, souvenirs, books and collectibles being shipped home by British citizens who were in Europe on the traditional continental journey called The Grand Tour.

France was at war with England, having given its support to America in the revolution. French warships seized the British ship off the coast of Spain, and took possession of all its contents.

A Spanish trading company bought the cargo. It sold the foodstuffs to the general public and the artworks to the King of Spain. Then the artworks vanished from sight.

More than 200 years later, some questions about the origins of some funerary urns led a team of Spanish archivists on an incredible journey of research and re-discovery. This quest culminates in a show on the walls now at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

As it turns out, those urns had been on board the Westmorland, and were part of the booty that had been dubbed "The English Prize."

"There was no sunken ship. There were no pirates. This was a legal prize," said José María Luzón Nogué, the man whose research on the urns brought the exhibit into being.

Luzón Nogué emphasized that all the artworks, despite being stolen, are not owned by the families of the people they were stolen from (as he called them, "the descendants of all this"). The items were insured and everyone was compensated, and during wartime, property seizures such as this were common.

Luzón Nogué said the value of the artworks in the exhibit is varied. "There is a wide range of quality of objects," he said. "Some are souvenirs. Some are fine artworks.

"The tastes of people of that time are reflected by the contents of the Westmorland," he said. "Some of these are copies of other artworks, but they were considered perfectly good. As some say, better a good copy than a bad original."

For this reason, Scott Wilcox, curator of the Yale exhibit, said that the exhibit is as much about the Grand Tour as it is about the Westmorland. "It was a period of travel on the continent, of upper-class English gentlemen of the 18th and 19th centuries," Wilcox said. "It was considered the capstone of their education."

About 700 items — 50 paintings, 40 sculptures, 300 books, 50 to 60 maps and 200 musical scores — were on the ship. The exhibit in New Haven has 140 items. The original owners of many of the items have been identified, but the original owners of many other items are known only by the initials on the crates in which they traveled. Many of the owners were wealthy, titled men, including William Henry, the first Duke of Gloucester, the brother of England's King George III, whose fondness for marble statuary is on display in this exhibit.

Another stunning stone work in the show is a decorative tabletop, owner unknown, made of marble, granite, serpentinite and alabaster, mined from ancient quarries.

The most prodigious collector of works seized on the Westmorland is Francis Bassett. The wealthy art aficionado posed for a portrait by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni in Italy and then, after putting it on the ship, never saw it again. That portrait is on the cover of the sumptuous catalog that Yale produced to complement the exhibit.

"This was just one temporary hiccup in a lifetime of collecting," Wilcox said.

Another acquisition of Bassett, and one of the most noteworthy elements of the exhibit, is a set of six pristine watercolor landscapes by John Robert Cozens. Luzón Nogué is especially fond of these works. "This is the first time these have been exposed. They have been in an archive," he said. "That's why the colors are still so fresh and bright. Other watercolors of that time have been exposed for many years, and the colors have faded."

Other portraits of titled men are found throughout the exhibit. Those items, Wilcox said, were the most difficult to replace by people who lost them. Many of the owners sat for other portraits after they lost their originals. "They sat in exactly the same positions as they did in Italy," he said.

One of the most striking elements of the exhibit is, ironically, an artwork that is not there. Wilcox called it "the one that got away."

Anton Raphael Meng's "The Liberation of Andromeda by Perseus" was separated from the other artworks on the ship before the works were sold to the trading company. It was given as a gift to the French naval minster, who did not like art. He later sold it to Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. The painting is now in the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg.

A floor-to-ceiling photo of that painting is projected onto a blank wall, because the Yale museum could not arrange to borrow it. Wilcox was quick to point out the irony.

"The exhibition is about the effects of politics on art. Modern-day politics prevented it [from being loaned]," Wilcox said. "There is an embargo on loans from Russian to American museums."

THE ENGLISH PRIZE: THE CAPTURE OF THE WESTMORLAND, AN EPISODE OF THE GRAND TOUR is at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. in New Haven, until Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Museum hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Details: britishart.yale.edu.